“And what about your brother?” he’d asked.

“What about my brother?” Lucien’s tone had been sharp.

Perhaps, Emil had thought, he’d gone too far.

But Dimitri, surely, would want to stay and fight.

And this was going to cause a problem.

“Well…” Emil knew he was going to have to choose his next words with care. “I just thought that you might want to warn your brother that the Palatine is in town, so that he and your nephew can make their escape, as well.”

“And I shall say something to my brother,” the prince said. “When the time is right.”

Emil thought he had seen which way the wind was blowing with that remark.

And that was when he decided that he had best do as the prince said and get Mary Lou out of town as soon as possible.

And not just because there was a Palatine guard staying next door, or because that Palatine guard was about to be used as a pawn in the ongoing vampire war between two brothers…

But because there was a glint in the prince’s eye that Emil had never seen there before.

And Emil had a pretty good idea what-or, more accurately, who-had put that glint there.

He would never look at Meena Harper in the same way again. If he ever saw her again, that is.

Now he turned to his wife, who was piling shoes into another suitcase, and said, “Darling. Enough. They have shoes in Tokyo.”

Mary Lou looked at him with streaming eyes. “But I’ve had some of these for over forty years! And you know they’re in style again now.”

“We’ll be back for them, darling,” he said, laying a gentle hand on her arm.

“Are you sure?” she asked with a sniffle.

Emil thought back to the steadfast expression he’d seen on the prince’s face. He didn’t know what Lucien had planned.

But he was certain the prince had a plan of some kind.

And it wasn’t going to be pretty, for anyone who happened to be around, when that plan got under way.

“I’m quite sure,” he said to his wife. “We have to go. I think there’s a battle brewing.”

“You said that already,” Mary Lou said, sniffling. “The Palatine…”

“No,” Emil said. “Between the prince and his brother.”

“Well, of course there is,” Mary Lou said bitterly. “They’ve hated each other for centuries. That’s why I thought if the prince met a nice girl, he might mellow out a little. And I thought Meena would be perfect for him, because of that thing she does.”

Emil stared at her. “What thing is that, dear?” he asked.

She couldn’t, he told himself, know. How could she? He hadn’t known until the prince had told him himself, that morning. And he knew everything that went on in their world. Didn’t he?

“You know.” Mary Lou waved a hand impatiently over her head. “She predicts how people are going to die. I thought the prince might like it. It makes her different, you know, than other girls.”

“You knew about this?” Emil asked with a feeling of growing horror. “You knew Meena Harper could do this when you asked her to dinner at our home…with the prince?”

“Of course I did.” Mary Lou stared at him like he was an idiot. “I ride the elevator with her nearly every day. You think I don’t know what’s going on in that head of hers? Well, I’ll admit…it’s a little confusing in there. But that brother of hers, he’s an open book. I just put two and two together. I’ll admit, I was always a little tempted to take a bite myself, just to see what it would be like. But you always said not to eat where we live. But when I found out the prince was coming, I thought, Wouldn’t it be nice if they got together? A girl who can tell when everyone is going to die, and your cousin, the prince of darkness, with everything he can do. Together…well, talk about a power couple! And then if he turned her…well, think about the possibilities!”

“Mary Lou,” Emil said. He felt as if his entrails had turned to stone. “You haven’t told anyone, have you? About Meena and her ability. And about her and the prince getting together. Tell me you haven’t told anyone.”

“Well, no,” Mary Lou said, her eyelids fluttering. “I mean, no one who matters. Just Linda. And Faith. Well, and Carol, from your office. And Ashley. Oh, and Becca, of course.”

“Oh, God,” Emil said with a groan.

Then he reached for his cell phone.

Chapter Forty-seven

7:00 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

Shrine of St. Clare

154 Sullivan Street

New York, New York

Meena sat at the gleaming kitchen table across from Yalena, watching her as she lifted the mug of steaming cocoa to her lips with fingers that still shook hours after her rescue. Meena wasn’t sure Yalena would ever stop shaking after everything she had been through.

“More hot milk for your cocoa, dear?” Sister Gertrude asked her, hovering nearby with a pitcher.

Yalena didn’t respond. It wasn’t clear if she didn’t understand what the nun was saying or if she was deaf from all the blows she’d received at the hands of her captors.

Or maybe she was just in shock from everything that had happened.

Meena didn’t blame her. She was still in a little bit of shock from the way Alaric had leapt across all those tables, single-handedly subdued Stefan, then assured all the stunned lunch patrons at Shenanigans that Stefan was a meth head and that Alaric was an undercover cop who was putting him under arrest.

Meena was pretty sure if she’d been sitting there, eating Sticky Wings at Shenanigans, she’d never have believed it.

But everyone-even the waitstaff and manager, who’d offered all the customers free Onion Bricks for their inconvenience-seemed fine with it.

It wasn’t until they’d started down Shenanigans’ back staircase to grab a cab to St. Clare’s-where, Alaric had insisted, they’d get help for Yalena and “the rest of this straightened out”-that they’d discovered two more “vamps” (as Alaric called them) waiting in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs.

They’d fled upon seeing Alaric holding Stefan at sword-point, tearing through the restaurant’s kitchens and out a back door to a Town Car waiting in a darkened alley. The car, its windows tinted almost black, took off with a squeal of brakes…or so Jon, who’d chased after the vampires, reported. Apparently they’d been expecting only Meena, Yalena, and of course Stefan…not Meena, Yalena, Stefan, Meena’s brother, and a hulking demon hunter from the Palatine Guard.

First Meena’s boyfriend. Then her next-door neighbors. Now one of the actors on the show on which she worked.

Was everyone she knew going to turn out to be a vampire?

Meena had known Stefan Dominic looked familiar. She just hadn’t been able to place him back at the studio. But why had Stefan-who’d turned out to be Gerald, of all people-tried to kidnap her?

Alaric was in another part of St. Clare’s, applying holy water to different parts of Stefan Dominic’s body, trying to discover the answer to that very question.

From where she sat, in the rectory kitchen, Meena could barely hear the vampire’s screams.

“There you go,” Sister Gertrude said soothingly, pouring more milk into Yalena’s mug, even though the girl hadn’t indicated she wanted more. Then the nun bent down to straighten the downy comforter she’d draped around Yalena’s shoulders. “Nice and hot. Good for the body. Good for the soul.”

Yalena didn’t know how lucky she was to still have a soul.

Or maybe she did. Meena wasn’t sure what the girl knew.

One thing Meena knew:

The way Alaric had saved Meena-and Yalena-at Shenanigans had softened her attitude toward him. There was something to be said for someone who would leap over several restaurant tables to wrap his bare hand around the throat of a vampire who was trying to kidnap you.

“Does this happen often?” she asked Abraham Holtzman, pointing in the direction from which the faint sounds of Stefan Dominic’s screams could be heard. Abraham had introduced himself to Meena and Jon as Alaric Wulf’s boss. He was currently pacing nervously up and down the kitchen, occasionally bumping into Sister Gertrude and saying, Oh, I beg your pardon, Sister.